Life, Work and Legacy of Carl Jung

Carl Jung Quotations 16

If we seek our connection with the snake we come to the spinal cord and that points to the animal soul of man which leads him down into the darkness of the body, into the instinct which one meets in animal form in the outer world. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199-200.

This leads us over to the secret gnosis of the Middle Ages, when it takes the form of alchemy. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198

On Gnostic gems we find the symbol of the vase, the vase of sin. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199.

The Gnosis is a disturber of the peace of the Church, but it is full of psychological truths, many yet undiscovered. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 199

It is as if the dream were quite uninterested in the fate of the ego, it is pure Nature, it expresses the given thing, it mirrors the state of our consciousness with complete detachment; it never says “to do it in such and such a way would be well”, but states that it is so. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 8March1935, Pages 198.

The child born in a country takes something of that land, it is the secret influence of the place. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Pages 241.

The ancestral part is given to us by our body, we take over the life of our ancestors in that way. It is the terrace of life because it is here that life renews itself. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Pages 240.

The East understands active phantasying and its inner meaning far better than we do. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 12July1935, Pages238.

The same instinct that moved you at the age of fifteen may be moving you again when much older and yet there is something showing that the whole process which is happening in the unconscious is different, the images are becoming liberated from the active instinct. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 214.

In the collective unconscious the archetypes and the instincts are one and the same thing. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.

This system of images is also born in human beings, it is the archetypes, the potential force in man, but it only comes to the surface when the moment for it is ripe, then the archetype functions as an urge, like an instinct. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.

The task in these cases is to look for the meaning, for there is a meaning in both love and sex, and in every instinctive urge. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.

The age of the body is something we often swindle ourselves about, but this swindle does not help the psyche. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Pages 213.

The method of actual phantasying is seldom advisable for young people as it tends to hinder them in their task of getting into reality, and the young need actual experience. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture IV 24 May 1935, Page 212.

The mystical rose, like the lotus in India, grows for the salvation of man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939

Komarius teaches Cleopatra that the dead who stay in Hades [that is in chaos) are transformed into Spring flowers by the miraculous dew. This is the idea of the living elements in chaos or Shunyata waking and uniting through being contained in the lotus. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 101.

Christ is spoken of as being born or hidden in a rose, or as a sea bird resting in a flower of the sea. This is a direct analogy to Buddha appearing in the Lotus in the Amitabha Land with geese and swans about him. Pages 100-101.

Alchemical philosophy is an instrument and a way to the inner transformation of man, a problem which is practically unknown today. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 99.

We can understand thinking, feeling and sensation but intuition is another thing. We do not know how we arrive at an intuition, it is perception by way of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 99.

Divinitas sancti spiritus has a peculiar relation to Mary, for the Sapientia Dei or Sophia was identified by the early Church with Mary. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

It is only within the last few years that a few Lamas have become interested in giving their texts to the world. This is largely due to Sir John Woodroffe and to the American Evans Wentz who succeeded in getting in touch with such people, and in interesting them in the translation and publication of some of their texts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

The official example of Yoga in the West is the exercitia spiritualia of St. Ignatius of Loyola. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

The unconscious comes into action through the attitude of the conscious in active imagination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

We find all the ancient forms of the human psyche in dreams and in such texts as the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

We must know how the human psyche came into being for in the unconscious the old ways are always trodden again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

Women played a considerable part in alchemy, and worked at it themselves. This is not the case in Indian Yoga, with the exception of Tantrism. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24Feb1939, Pages 92.

We do not know what a spirit is any more than we understand matter. We are really enclosed in a psychic world of images. We label everything as physical or spiritual but the only reality is purely psychic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 75.

It is not that the things do not exist but that our perception of them is nothing but illusion. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 75.

ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 74.Here is a piece of the superior wisdom of the East. The Yogin realizes that all the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Devatas with which he has filled the heavens are Maya illusion just as the world itself is Maya. All this plurality is illusion. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 74.

While we are in avidya, we act like automatons, we have no idea what we are doing. Buddha regarded this as absolutely unethical. Avidya acts in the sense of the concupiscentia and involves us in suffering, illness and death. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 74.

As the Yogin is a man his conscious is masculine, so the male Devatas represent his conscious thoughts , religious, philosophical and personal. He has already been freed from his masculine conscious, but to be really freed he must also externalize his feminine unconscious. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 72.

We are in a bad situation in the West for we are living as decapitated heads. The intellect is indispensable in order to understand, but you must feel yourselves that our text is not just related to the head, it arises from whole man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

The European who practises Yoga does not know what he is doing. It has a bad effect upon him, sooner or later he gets afraid and sometimes it even leads him over the edge into madness. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

Mandalas are sometimes made with the express purpose of evil, to do people harm. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

We are very much afraid of the word magic, it has a bad name, for its meaning has degenerated and it has a purely superstitious sound in our ears. But magical was originally simply psychical, the ancients did not know of the existence of the psyche, so not being able to call anything psychic they used the word magic. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

Modern philosophers philosophise with the head alone about man, but the old philosophy came from the whole man. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI, 3Feb1939, Page 71.

This round motif should be kept clearly in your mind, for it is an exceedingly important symbol in the West as well as in the East. It is especially women who produce such symbols in the West. This is not the case in the East, the mandalas are made by men, the feminine has remained unconscious. We find an exception to this rule in the matriarchal South of India. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture XI., 3Feb1939, Page 70.

I do not know why India was not able to keep Buddhism, but I think probably its present polytheistic religion is a better expression of the Indian soul today than the one perfect Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.

There is one tribe in Central Australia which spends two thirds of its time in religious ritual – and how much do we? We look down on them as primitives, but their way is far more meaningful than ours. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.

Where there are no forms and ceremonies , rites in which they can express their souls, people become moody and caught in conflicts. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.

It is a great blessing for mankind when the soul is contained in the dogma and there is always a great deal of misery when this is not the case. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 69.

As Buddha and his teaching are still recognized within the frame of the Hindu religion, you find traces of him everywhere; but his achievement, amazing consciousness and highest integrity are no longer to be found in India today, though Rishis and Yogins still make private efforts to reach its illumination. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 68.

In India it has given way to Hinduism, in which Buddha is merely the ninth, that is the last, incarnation or avatar of Vishnu. The Hindus believe that the time of Buddha has passed and that a tenth avatar of Vishnu in the form of a white horse will soon appear. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 68.

People cannot stand having unnatural virtue around them all day, it makes them feel inferior and they may even be come criminals in order to compensate it. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 66.

The idea of a normal man, perfectly healthy, is in itself an illusion. All mankind is liable to illness for we are not our own masters. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.

We do not suffer from the delusion that a cherry could not hang on its stalk without our help, yet it never occurs to us that we are just as powerless in our own dreams. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.

We know that twice two are four, for instance, but we cannot call that our subjective knowledge. We simply take over such facts ready-made and play chess with them; for we can to some extent use the fact that twice two are four for our own purposes even though it does not belong to us. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.

The Yogin’s Buddha is a subjective and objective image. It lies in the Yogin’s power to create him or to leave him uncreated and yet the Buddha has an objective existence. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 27Jan1939, Pages 65.

The eastern gods all have two aspects, Kwannon, the well-known goddess of kindness, is also the goddess of hell. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 57

.There must be a long preparation to be Buddha, if we do not realise this we are taking part in a holy ceremony with dirty hands. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.

When people are foolish enough to imitate the East their bodies rise up against them and teach them better. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.

The East is absolutely convinced that we actually lived former lives but such assertions are open to doubt. We call the same thing hereditary tendencies, our disposition, certain things run in the family, etc. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.

In the West we are always using our intuition on outward things, but the East turns their Sangskara-skandha inwards. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.

Very highly developed people can remember their former lives, even back into animal lives. Buddha remembered innumerable lives and spoke freely of them. There are curious cases of this kind to be found even now. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.

As we have already seen that Karma is the sum-total of what we bring over from former lives, our debit and credit account, merits and losses. Sangskara is the sum-total of the mind that we have created in former existences. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Pages 55-56.

Kant himself emphasises that God, the Highest Being, is in no way affected by what we know about him. So the Yogin analyses what he knows about Buddha and takes the last word in the Mantra: “Aham” for this purpose. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.

The meditation on the syllables of the mantra leads to identification with the highest Self. This condition, sometimes reaching ecstasy, is dangerous to the Yogin, for if the human being believes that he is the absolute he may explode. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.

The meditation on the syllables of the mantra leads to identification with the highest Self. This condition, sometimes reaching ecstasy, is dangerous to the Yogin, for if the human being believes that he is the absolute he may explode. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.

Archives

(from the Red Book) Carl Jung, on “The Resurrection of the Christ Within” What is important and meaningful to my life is that I shall live as fully as possible to fulfill the divine will within me. This task gives me so much to do that I have no time or any other. […]

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The Isha Upanishad offers insight into some core dialectics of enlightenment. Spiritual dialectics are resolved in the Innermost Self (Ātman), as a spiritual seeker realizes higher and higher levels of synthesis, until an ultimate dialectic is… More

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In the image above, we see the Divine Child in the form of Ganesha. The Sanskrit word Ganesha is from gana meaning “multitude” and isha meaning lord “lord” [1]. Ganesha is half elephant and half human. In… More

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